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Fired AOL Engineer gets 15 Months
n3hat writes "A former America Online software engineer was sentenced to 15 months in prison for stealing 92 million screen names and e-mail addresses and selling them to spammers who sent out up to 7 billion unsolicited e-mail messages, according to this A.P. story in the Baltimore Sun."
AOL still blows and we are amazed people still use it.
I know, I know... probably a flamebait rating but come on, you know you giggled!
Q: I am short, useless and provide no value. What am I? A: a sig
He has got just 1 second of jail per 175 emails.
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra
NEW YORK - A former America Online software engineer was sentenced yesterday to a year and three months in prison for stealing 92 million screen names and e-mail addresses and selling them to spammers who sent out up to 7 billion unsolicited e-mail messages.
"I know I've done something very wrong," a soft-spoken and teary Jason Smathers told U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein.
The judge credited the 25-year-old former Harpers Ferry, W.Va., resident for his contrition and efforts to help the government before he pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges. A plea deal had called for a sentence of at least 1 1/2 years in prison.
In a letter from Smathers to the court, part of which was read into the record by Assistant U.S. Attorney David Siegal, Smathers tried to explain the crimes that AOL has said cost the company at least $300,000 and possibly millions of dollars.
"Cyberspace is a new and strange place," Siegal said Smathers wrote. "I was good at navigating in that frontier, and I became an outlaw."
As the judge indicated he would be lenient toward Smathers, Siegal told Hellerstein that the public needs to learn from the case that the "Internet is not lawless. The public at large has an interest in making sure people respect the same values that apply in everyday life, on the Internet."
The judge said in imposing the reduced sentence that he recognized that Smathers cooperated fully with the government but did not have the kind of information that would have helped to build other criminal cases.
First plea rejected
He said leniency was appropriate for "someone who tries hard to bare his soul but doesn't have the information the government needs."
In December, Hellerstein rejected the first attempt by Smathers to plead guilty, saying he was not convinced Smathers actually had committed a crime. The judge accepted the plea in February, saying prosecutors had sufficiently explained why he had.
Smathers has admitted that he accepted $28,000 from someone who wanted to pitch an offshore gambling site to AOL customers, knowing that the list of screen names might make its way to others who would send e-mail solicitations.
The judge has recommended $84,000 restitution, triple what Smathers earned. The imposition of restitution was delayed to give AOL a chance to prove that the damages were much greater, after the judge suggested the $300,000 damage figure was subjective.
Prosecutors said Smathers had engaged in the interstate transportation of stolen property and had violated a new federal CAN-SPAM law, short for Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act, which is meant to diminish unsolicited e-mail about everything from Viagra to mortgages.
In December, the judge said he had dropped his own AOL membership because he received too much spam.
America Online Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Time Warner Inc., has since launched a major assault on spam, significantly reducing unsolicited e-mail.
Smathers was fired by AOL in June. Authorities said he used another employee's access code to steal the list of AOL customers in 2003 from its headquarters in Dulles, Va.
Still circulating
Smathers allegedly sold the list to Sean Dunaway of Las Vegas, who used it to send unwanted gambling advertisements to subscribers of AOL, the world's largest Internet provider. Charges are pending against Dunaway.
The stolen list of 92 million AOL addresses included multiple addresses used by each of AOL's estimated 30 million customers. It is believed to be still circulating among spammers.
The judge refused a Probation Department recommendation that Smathers be banned from his profession, saying he trusted Smathers had learned his lesson.
Obligatory Family Guy joke: "Remember last week when you asked me to define irony and I said - urarghhh!" AOL personally kept me supplied with floppy disks during my school dayz, and many a cd coaster when I started working IT. These guys are the king of snail mail spam (virus(AOL8) laden cd's anyone :) and here this guy goes and follows their lead online, further screwing over the poor AOL customers. I love it.
The rock, the vulture, and the chain
Prisoner #1: So what're you in for?
Prisoner #2: Aggravated assault. You?
Prisoner #1: Armed robbery. How 'bout you?
AOL Engineer: I stole 92 million screen names and e-mail addresses and sold them to spammers who sent out up to 7 billion unsolicited e-mail messages.
Prisoners #1 and 2 inch away from AOL Engineer at the lunch table
AOL E-mail Data Thief Gets 15 Months in Prison
AP's Larry Neumeister reports that the AOL employee who sold 92 million stolen e-mail addresses and screen names to spammers has been sentenced to one year and three months in prison. Jason Smathers sold the list to spammers for $28,000, who then proceeded to send as many as 7 billion spam messages. The prosecutor in the case estimated 'AOL suffered a loss of 10 cents for every 1,000 spam e-mails sent to subscribers.' The judge suggested that Smathers pay $84,000 in restitution but will decide on the final figure after AOL files details of financial losses due to increased staff, hardware and software costs. An interesting note: Judge Alvin Hellerstein said in December that he canceled his AOL subscription because he received too much spam.
2005-08-17 21:42:32 AOL E-mail Data Thief Gets 15 Months in Prison (Index,Spam) (rejected)
How many years are AOL's management getting for... well, managing AOL.
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
I've never understood why non-violent criminals are even put into jail. Instead of us taxpayers paying about 25 grand a year for this guy(a number I pulled directly out of my ass, by the way); he should be forced to repay the damage that he has done. And, if it takes the rest of his life, then so be it; just don't let the guy declare bankruptcy (another thing I've never really understood).
Anyways, save jail for the murderers, rapists, and child molesters of the world. Make people like this guy, Martha Stewart, and Bernie Ebbers repay they're debt in other more productive ways.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
I'm sure AOL email account holders would have a higher "hit rate" for spam conversions.
Maybe he should be punished by having to work doing AOL support from prison.
__
Sick videos. Seriously disgusting.
I wonder how he stole them? And how long did it take for him to give them back? Did they ever find them?
of those 92 million, only about 2 million actually use aol mail... the rest are people who used up thier free trial and moved on.
I mean seriously, you expect me to believe that AOL has 92 million paying customers?
Honestly if I were a spammer, I'd only pay half price for AOL addresses, the odds of someone reading your email (especially after filtering) is nearly zero.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
"He's nothing but a low-down, double-dealing, backstabbing, larcenous perverted worm! Hanging's too good for him. Burning's too good for him! He should be torn into little bitsy pieces and buried alive!"
Indeed.
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
Kevin Mitnick prowls around some machines, steals nothing, damages nothing, yet spends four years in jail waiting for his trial, gets a five year sentence, and has to stay away from computers for another few years, while this fucknuts steals a subscriber list for spammers and gets a slap on the wrist? Doesn't even have to stay away from other people's mail servers? Riiight.
All in the name of poetic justice.
Fight Spammers!
Does anybody actually know the charge he was convicted of? I looked at the article and it mentioned pleas and taking "stolen property" across state lines, and CAN-SPAM, but none of these were clear as to what he was actually convicted of.
Anybody?
"You've Got Jail !"
StupidChildren...the reason jesus is crying
"I know I've done something very wrong,"
Come on, what else could you say...
"I just stole 92 million email addresses and sold them...sorry guys, I didn't know what I was doing."
Before you die, you see DoubleRing...
He's NOT that cute.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
You heard.
He better pray for solitary confinement. Bubba and his posse are all fiercely loyal AOL users and they don't NEED no \/i@GR@ or Ci@li5.
what's the point in selling 92 million email address? any dictionary attack worth it's weight will have found 80%+ of those accounts anyway... with 92 million of these suckers, any @ aol.com will almost certainly come up with a match, or at least a partial match.
I mean he stole a ton of personal info and stuff.
There are a lot of hardcore hackers that got a ton more time than that.
Tell me what you think?
ACK
For that many people shouldn't he be held responsible for each and everyone of their woes?
From what I understand, there are several robot programs that go through AOL chat rooms and suck down screen names for use in spam operations. I would suspect that that technique is:
- more effective, since all of the addresses you gather are known good
- cheaper, since you can get millions of addresses a week then cancel your free trial
- less risky
A spammer that pays that kind of money for such a seemingly worthless list of stolen addresses should look for another line of work.
bash: rtfm: command not found
Cost in dolars delete spam from your AOL account: $5
Cost to have CompUSSR repair your PC from spyware: $150
The look on the spammer's face as he see "Bubba" get a penis enlargement spam: Priceless
There are some things money can't buy, for everything else there's KARMA!
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Jesus christ man, go take a pill before you blow a vein or some shit.
Have to wonder...Will he end up like that Russian Spammer? Murdered :)
I must say, that fate should befall all spammers...
The most I've ever got from AOL was 1 month free.
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
hahahaha... that was truly funny, the only funny joke I've seen here all week. congrats
Do you think the Baltimore Sun will get slashdotted?
If you read TFA you'll see that the AOLer got off easy because he pleaded guilty very early on. In contrast this Kevin Mitnick nitwit is even now trying to play the victim and not really sounding contrite about it.
Take a look at his photo so you'll know what I mean....
Best Buy can have you arrested
This type of person should get a day in jail and fined $2 for every email address they sell.
Also Spammers should get a day in jail for every email they send and fined $2 as well. Furthermore the should be made to take one viagra pill for every email they sent advertising it.
"I'm going to f***ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f***ing kill Google"
I think that hacking is something hyped up by the media and the government higher-ups as something that will harm us etc etc, and in many ways that's true (dumbasses - see worms, virus's, crackers, etc). So, when a hacker is caught, there is much media attention, and the price of damage probably gets multiplied several times.
But then you get to things like spammers, which is an annoyance, but has never really harmed anyone visibly. It is simply an annoyance, somethign that people have learned to deal with.
So, when it comes to a case involving one or the other, the sentence is added accordingly, albeit a little unjustly.
Foxed Design
I spent a lot of time, money, and effort so I can legally call myself an "engineer". Don't let some VB script "software programmer" use that title. It's offensive.
Best Buy can have you arrested
I hate AOL, but the only reason my dad has it is because I cam not old enough to get my own ISP, and for some crazy reason my dad likes AOL, so that is what I am stuck with. But, I don't actually use AOL, other than for connecting. Then I minimize it and use Avant browser and Trillian messenger, and my Gmail email address. Now I know why even though i don't even use AOL's email, I get all this spam. Wonderful. *sarcasm*
Windows Vista, baby! Since I am so cool, I use Windows! Windows Person and LOVING IT!!!
... wasn't Martha Siegel instead of David Siegal. He would have gotten off.
It all comes down to fear. People fear "hackers", and so hackers get tougher sentences.
Everyone understands the notion of an employee stealing personal information from their company. On the other hand, the average
American has no clue how hardcore hackers do what they do, or what they are capable of and so naturally hackers are feared. They are the "boogey man" of technology.
OK - no chance of the government being that smart... but it would be nice.
A microsoft lover? Wow, you aren't going to last very long...
mod parent as funny pls :)
This is absurd. What a paltry amount of time to serve for such a hardened thug! There are people who get more time than that for murdering or robbing someone, and that's just sad. When are we going to crack down and show these online hoodlums that crime doesn't pay?
The Chronic *WHAT* les of Narnia!
Why post anonymously?
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
I couldn't resist.
I think the whole thing is silly and that people who get all worked up over it are people with no life and no prospects.
This is just like spam; nobody would post tfa if there weren't a market for it or an advantage in it ...
Why don't we put this clown in the stocks in the public square of his hometown, and let anyone who's received a spam from his customers slap him upside the head?
Sure, it might result in a fatal concussion sometime around the fourth of fifth hour of people lining up to smack him, but them's the breaks.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The guy got CANNED, but so did we...
My Linux - (L)ove (I)s (N)ever (U)tterly eXPensive
Yeah, hilarious. He desereved to be gang raped and/or forced to perform sexual favors for his crime that physicall harmed no one.
Also I guess I missed where the judge included "rape" in the 15 month jail sentence.
Internet tough guys, huh?
The article just says "conspiracy", which is pretty vague. I suspect that it means "conspiracy to commit fraud", 18 USC 371, punishable by up to 5 years.
hey let's play the spelling game, I'll go first
;__;
no I lose
You've got jail!
" If I had to go to jail for a cybercrime, I would at least want the other inmates to understand the charge."
The public at large may not be experts in some of the more sophisticated crimes, nor in the finer points of intellectual property (e.g., as applied to those database records), but stuff like spam is something you don't need a Ph.D. in CS to understand. If someone doesn't understand, someone else will explain it to them.
Spammer: "I sold 92 million AOL email addresses to spammers."
Bubba: "Uh, wot's a spammer"
Billy Joe: "Bubba, you know those 'enlarge your penis' and 'horny teens waiting for you' messages you told me your little daughter was getting on AOL? This guy told them where to send those."
Which way it goes from there, I wouldn't know. But from there Bubba understands exactly what the cybercrime was.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
92 million is alot, I wonder those numbers count the numerous teens that get online with their parents CC# and make new screen names..... I understand all of the frustration about the spam, I have my email from a good host company and I still receive spam. No I dont personaly like AOL, but just like people who dont like Microsoft, still use their products (not everyone runs Linux on here I know that for sure) as well I know just about anyone that uses Nix and a instant messanger will get some type of relation to AIM. I dont think he is a 'Megafauna' as someone stated before hand. Yes, he should be held responible for what actions he took. Just the same as people living in Phx AZ should still be suing the hell out of Quest and Verizon Wireless for selling their customers information (I personaly have seen thousands of 'leads', you think that will stop anytime soon?). I have done numerous call center jobs and if its not the employee on a low level selling the information, there is an actual person with that as their job alone. Had AOL actually taken steps to avoid one of their own employees from doing such a thing, they would not have needed to spend the extra " $300,000 and possibly millions of dollars." "The judge has recommended that Smathers be forced to pay $84,000 in restitution, triple what he earned. He delayed the order to let AOL prove the damages were higher. The judge suggested the $300,000 damage figure was speculative." Do you people even relize how much money that already is to a person in american middle class life? I mean seriously, its 3x what he said he took, yes Im sure he could have lied, and Im sure Dunaway could too, but thats 3x. What have you guys stole in your life..... How many hosting/email companys actually care weather you get spam or not? AOL does it theirselves. And no matter who you are with, somehow, you will always get spam. Just like you always get junk mail. When you try and sign up for a credit card or some bullshit online, you think they wont sell your info? HAHAHAHA Smathers does know what he did was wrong, the same way you know when you are a kid and your hand is stuck in the cookie jar and your mother walks in with a hand on one hip and the other just shaking the finger (instead of fist) at you. He didnt make alot of money, shit happens, he relized he would get caught, and he plead GUILTY. Im not going to sit here and defend him, thats not my job, but Im also not going to sit here and let some of you flame him up and down when many worse things have happened online. Do you see the bitches that are sending out viruses get caught lately? No, because we are more worried about AOL and their spam issues, which seeing as both Smathers and Dunaway are up for court...I think thats being taken care of. If he sold the shit to Dunaway and then went bye bye, you think he knows wtf happened to the leads? Like he would even care, I mean would you if you did it? No, you woudl take your $$$ and run. I do agree to a point when someone mentioned that he should/should not be able to use computers any longer.......if you are able to get that type of information, your boss should be smart enough to relize you have just became the AOL Spammer. I think all work related information should be kept away from him, and he need warn all employees (weather face to face, or a freelance job) what has happened, same thing as when a Rapist need tell new neighbors that he is infact a kiddie perv. Point in end: He did it, he got caught, now he must lay in his bed of thornes, weather in jail or house arrest, or more fines added to what Im sure he already has. Maybe we should work more on fixing the other problems we face now in the IT time and less about whats already being worked on.
They take common names and add three-digit or more extensions just as many acutal AOL users select their names. Start with ann001@aol.com (would anyone used ann000?) through ann999, bill001 thru bill999, to walt001 through walt999, and you can get a bunch of names there. Don't even bother with the bounces, have reply-to point to (poor) ann001. This is not efficient, probably most will bounce, but spammers don't care, especially when the sending bandwidth being abused is some foreign open server.
Tag lost or not installed.
Reminds me of something an old professor of mine would quote whenever someone would wish disproportionate punishment upon a person.
"Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot that it do singe yourself." - Shakespeare, King Henry VIII
If we wish murder upon this guy, how medieval should we act toward actual threats to society?
Hey sizzlechest. Are you fucking high?
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
He plead guilty and expressed believable remorse for his actions. That's the whole difference. Like it or not, that's how our system works.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
ya it is stupid to put him in jail, a much better punishment would be to make him hand write a spam message for every spam sent out, or hand type an apology and send it to every email on his list, or be a human spam filter for SA for free for 10000 hours...
Grass houses? So would that have like a thatched roof, or what?
AOL engineer: And creatin' a nuisance . . .
And they all came back, shook the Engineer's hand, and they had a great time talkin' about crime, aggravated assaultin', armed robberin', . . . all kinds of groovy things that they was talkin' about, and everything was fine.
I've been sentenced for a D.U.I. offense. My 3rd one. When I first came to prison, I had no idea what to expect. Certainly none of this. I'm a tall white male, who unfortunately has a small amount of feminine characteristics. And very shy. These characteristics have got me raped so many times I have no more feelings physically. I have been raped by up to 5 black men and two white men at a time. I've had knifes at my head and throat. I had fought and been beat so hard that I didn't ever think I'd see straight again. One time when I refused to enter a cell, I was brutally attacked by staff and taken to segragation though I had only wanted to prevent the same and worse by not locking up with my cell mate. There is no supervision after lockdown. I was given a conduct report. I explained to the hearing officer what the issue was. He told me that off the record, He suggests I find a man I would/could willingly have sex with to prevent these things from happening. I've requested protective custody only to be denied. It is not available here. He also said there was no where to run to, and it would be best for me to accept things . . . . I probably have AIDS now. I have great difficulty raising food to my mouth from shaking after nightmares or thinking to hard on all this . . . . I've laid down without physical fight to be sodomized. To prevent so much damage in struggles, ripping and tearing. Though in not fighting, it caused my heart and spirit to be raped as well. Something I don't know if I'll ever forgive myself for.
-A letter to Human Rights Watch
Prison rape is funny again, guys!
Well written.
Umm, MSFT_Lover (902210) isn't a he, it's a 15 year old girl, and while it's all well and good that she likes computers, being a Bill Gates fan girl isn't a good thing. Methinks that somebody needs to direct their interests towards a more age appropriate crush.
One might note that the young man is spending a whole 420 milliseconds in prison for each email address stolen. I am not sure what this sends as a message to other would be thieves. Is stealing a thousand names good for only 420 seconds in jail? Are there enough names in the world to put the fellow away for a serious length of time?
{^_-}
... we already have that system. You may notice that stuff like getting a different sentence for pleading guilty or cooperating with justice aren't new to this case. That's how the RL system works, and is supposed to work.
There is no such thing as purely objective justice, where the sentence is just spat out based on a formula. (Just feed the crime in, have a computer churn a few seconds, spit out the exact number of days in jail.) It's not even supposed to work that way.
As for who picks the nitwits, that's the judge. There's a reason laws give him/her a very broad interval and let him/her decide where in that interval you fit.
The job of justice isn't just to dish out punishment, but to hopefully reduce crime. And not just from a theoretical humanitarian point of view. There just isn't place in prisons to give maximum sentence to everyone. It's a limited resource, and you have to decide how much of it is _needed_ to help keep crime down.
So a judge's job _is_ to decide, among other things, what the risks are of you doing it again if he/she let you go.
If you've spent _years_ doing the same kind of crime, and still maintain that it was within your rights to do so and it's the victim's fault if their front door lock could be lockpicked (or their network could be broken into)... you've just convinced him/her that if you were let go, you'd run do the same.
So, yes, the moral of the story is: if you're a twit with the judge, he _is_ entitled to have the last laugh. That guy/gal isn't the enemy, and may well even be looking for an excuse to give you community service or a fine instead. (Like he suggested in this case at one point.) But if you tell him basically "bah, they deserved having their house/network/whatever burglarized, and you guys are victimizing me by trying to keep me from doing it again", congrats, you've just shot yourself in the foot.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
http://dis.4chan.org/read.php/dis/1124400519/1-40
Deus est fatalis
How can you be 100% sure that his actions directly or indirectly physically harmed no one?
Maybe a kid got kicked by his father after him catching him looking at porn he was viewing because he clicked a mail by accident.
Or maybe it was someone at work, who then got fired, got divorced and killed himself.
Maybe someone met a spammer and the street and kicked his ass. (my preferred)
Maybe someone got stressed by the hundreds of spams he received and had a car accident.
After all there was *only* 92 million email adresses.
And to finish. He will be in jail. He got what he deserved. And he gets harmed, it will be because of HIS actions. So his crime definitively had the potential to harm someone. HIM.
Sneak teach kids Algebra using a game
... this is in reference to Alice's Restaurant.
"Thank you. Please spellcheck your genitalia references though.
Actually, a better alternative would be to sentence him to sending apologies to all of the people whose addresses he stole.
By hand. One at a time.
If courts started making spammers do this instead, it'd be a much better deterrent than jail, and it would much better fit the crime.
You've got Male!
my mouse button isn't working so I couldn't clickthru :(
Ron dies in chapter 9 of book 7.
I can't help but think jail is a bit harsh. I mean, he sold the list, he didn't actually spam anyone.
I dunno, maybe something more inline, make the fucker person appologize to the 92 million customers, one at a time, in alphabetical order.
As for the cunt in vegas, well, string him up by the balls and poke fire ants into his nostrils.
Why is it that people think a distributed crime is any less of a crime? Do you think it'd be OK if he stole $130,000 from a bank? Then why do you think it's OK that he stole $0.0019 each (1 second's wages at $6.75/hr) from 70 million people? They work out to the same amount of money.
Prision is not a deterrent against white-collar crime: punitive damages and fines, preferrably the type that drives one to bankruptcy, are. The possibility of passing many years in jail just makes white-collar criminals more willing to "step up" and resort to common violence to cover up their white-collar crimes.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Therefore, the list of screennames would be worth much less to a spammer, as the delivery rate for the mails would be much lower, even with multiple addresses for each account.
"Teleporting Rodents with D-Cell Battery Displacement" theory -- IgnoramusMaximus (692000)
Now I know where the AOL engineers are getting their mad money from...
With software like that, AOL should offer a few e-mail addresses before hire as incentive for quality!
The cost that AOL pays for -- manufacturing and postage -- comes from AOL costumers.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
The guy you know that owns nothing still can be made to pick garbage in the side of a highway for $5/hour, till he pays his debt.
If white-collar criminals become more likely to commit violence to avoid prison, wouldn't that suggest that prison is something they fear? If this is true and some become more likely to restort to violence, it follows that some will be less likely to commit crimes in the first place.
NO, this is not how deterrance works. Deterrance works when the punishment is big enough for you to consider not comitting that crime, and not big enough for you to consider that "if I will do this, I may very well to THAT too, makes no difference".
I'm not speaking with a great deal of experience here but I'd hope that someone who steal 80,000 dollars through fraud and someone who walks in to a shop and steals the same amount would receive similar punishment (assuming the shop robbery didn't involve violence).
So do I. In my perfect world, they both would have to pay $320,000 to the shop owner/defrauded person -- even if it takes the rest of their lives picking garbage all the Saturday long -- and a hefty fine to the State (to pay for the judicial system). Now, if they disobeyed this, then it's all right to throw them in jail.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
We made a new dictionary word last year in his honor!
1 45224&tid=120&tid=111&tid=17
smather (verb): To have personal information sold to advertisers without your consent or knowledge.
"Man, I just got this new Hotmail account, but in less than an hour, it's been smathered!"
Has anyone been able to use this in everday conversation?
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/23/2
[DISCLAIMER: This post is a work of satire and should not be misconstrued as a holy text upon which to base a religion.]
Erm... if you mean on your gmail, AOL has nothing to do with non-@aol.com e-mail accounts. :p
I get almost 0 spam on most of my e-mail accounts. This includes:
- GMail
- My own domain name e-mail
Infact I get more spam on my college e-mail account (which I NEVER use... which makes me suspicious actually).
I get some spam occasionally on my Yahoo account too but less than I usually do.
The surprising thing is I don't think I really take any steps to protect my e-mails... I always leave the option on forums to show my e-mail, I'll sign up for some free service with my main e-mail address, etc.
Yet I don't get much spam.
Anyways the point I'm trying to make is that if you get spam, it's likely your fault. Somewhere along the line you signed up for a service that passed your e-mail around to spammers like good candy or you posted your e-mail too publically somewhere. Although we like to think the spammers take all the blame for spam, it's partially our fault for not keeping our account names more secret.
Here's a tip that used to work, it might still work:
When you supply an e-mail address, if yours is:
johndoe@gmail.com
and you're signing up for say, a slashdot account, you can try:
johndoe+slashdot@gmail.com
if it works you should STILL receive e-mails directed to that address... but in the To field you'll see johndoe+slashdot@gmail.com instead of your normal address. This allows you to immediately tell who sold you out if you get spam from, for example:
jogndoe+lolipopsunlimited@gmail.com
This tells you either lolipopsunlimited leaked your e-mail, or on their forums some robot harvested the address.
Of course it's possible for the + bit to be filtered out of the e-mail, or even rejected outright on registration forms.
This idiot should have gotten 15 years and forced to read every spam sent to aol every day.
My first thought was - "Wow, 15 months - what a great severance package! I only got three weeks when I got canned."
I know everyone loves that Steve Jobs quote about decreasing boot time*, and I know a distributed crime is still a crime, and I figure that white-collar criminals are probably the group of lawbreakers most likely to be swayed by 'examples' of horribly disproportionate punishments for crimes --
but to claim that being violently raped, repeatedly, is an acceptable repayment to society for any crime, is a sign that some people here need to unplug a bit. If you get more bent out of shape over spam than large scale violence against fellow people, no matter what laws or social boundaries they've crossed, then I sincerely hope I am never on the recieving end of your decision-making process. It's just junk mail. Yeah, it sucks; but if someone gave a nation the choice between everyone receiving junk mail every day, or having a specific individual gang raped, I should hope the nation would be enlightened enough to deal with the stupid colored pamphlets.
For the love of all that's right, end prison rape.
* It goes something like "It's my moral responsiblity to decrease the Mac's boot time, because if I shave ten seconds off, and have 5 million users, and they each use their Macs for so many years, I'll have saved fifty lives". Uncle Google is failing me right now...
From AOL TV commercial: "To say thanks, I baked you this apple crumb cake!"
Who thinks this guy should only eat apple crumb cake for the next 15 months, say aye!
I'm seriously hoping you're not a politician, or considering a career in law.
So you think it's okay Kevin spent all that time in prison without a trial? Do you realize that Mitnick never had a chance in court, and he pled guilty to get out of jail and get on with his Life?
I've met the guy. He's not a nitwit. As a start, how about you take a look at the documentary "Freedom Downtime" for Kevin's side of the story.
I have never used AOL and never will.
AOL is imho the devil.
I will never respect AOL.
"...you are a very bad man. I hereby sentence you to 15 months in a Federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison."
They should have taken out and shot him on network prime time TV.
But they didn't get Heather Robinson, the former AOL staffer who stole celebrities' screen names and worked those "newly found contacts" into various movie deals.
One is a criminal; the other is an "up and coming screenwriter". Obviously there is no consistency in how AOL deals with employee violations.
but granted they havent lost that much in that span of time.. NET users that is..
remember this??
but as you can see the last 2 years they have really shed some.. 2 million+ last year..so the ball is just now starting to tumble.
I don't know why the heck Symantec doesn't detect this stuff sometimes!!!
AOL put her IP on the blacklist. We have called AOL a few times to take it off the blacklist, they always say they will do it, yet, we still can't get an e-mail to AOL subscribers!!! er!! We don't use AOL and it still sucks!
Assuming that this man spends all of the 15 months in prison, that means that he would have spent approximately one day in jail for every 42,000 accounts compromised, or just over 1000 per hour of the work week, which is an email address about every four seconds.
He totally undermined confidence customers have in the company for chump change and then crawled on his belly when he was caught. The 15 months is just a little slap for a guy who will never be put in the position to take advantage of a big company like that again. Had he been smarter he'd be doing a dime in a federal pound me in the ass prison with a decent little sum of money waiting for him when he got out.
For some reason I refuse to use either spell check or the spacebar properly.
http://www.pvponline.com/archive/2005/pvp20050818. gif
Well, look, I'm not saying I'm for gang rape as such or anything. It's not like I've singled that out as the only punishment fit for him or anything.
I just want the guy to suffer, that's all. I want the next one who gets such an idea to cringe at the very thought.
Yeah, ok, thinking logically and on a general level, I'll even aggree that we should abolish prison rape. Seems like a reasonable thing to expect from a civilized country, after all.
But nevertheless, a little nasty part of me wants the spammers to suffer for the large scale damage they're doing, even in some other way. That's all I'm saying.
To be honest, I don't really care in which way he suffers. Put him in solitary confinement for 15 months, for all I care. (Which would also prevent any kind of rape, right?) Make him hand-write an apology to each and every single person in those 25 million accounts he's sold, like someone else suggested. At 10 seconds per apology, if he writes reasonably fast, and a (humane) 8 hours a day, 7 days a week, schedule, he should be done with it in about 23 years and 9 months. Whatever, really.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I'm becoming less defined as days go by Fading away, well you might say I'm losing focus Kind of drifting to the abstract In terms of how I see myself Sometimes I think I can see right through myself Less concerned about fitting into the world Your world that is Cause it doesn't really matter any more (no it doesn't really matter anymore) No it doesn't really matter any more None of this, really matters any more Yes I'm alone, then again I always was As far back as I can tell I think maybe it's because you were never really real to begin with I just made you up to hurt myself And it worked...yes it did There is no you! There is only me There is no you! There is only me There is no fucking you! There is only me There is no fucking you! There is only me Only Well the tiniest little dot caught my eye And it turned out to be a scab And I had this funny feeling Like I just knew it's something bad I just couldn't leave it alone I kept picking at the scab It was a doorway trying to seal itself shut But I climbed through Now I am somewhere I am not supposed to be And I can see things I know I really shouldn't see And now I know why, ya now I know why Things aren't as pretty, on the inside There is no you! There is only me There is no you! There is only me There is no fucking you! There is only me There is no fucking you! There is only me Only
If you spam me gmail's spam filter will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
larryvagina@gmail.com
He desereved to be gang raped and/or forced to perform sexual favors for his crime that physicall harmed no one.
Global karmic payback can be a bitch, huh?
Hell-o, future goatse.
I'm no whiz at this new math and all, but back in my day "$2,100,000.00" was closer to 2.1 million than billion.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
One, on the left, about 5mm in diameter. The other, on the right, about 3cm in diameter.
The circle on the left is your asshole before being sent to jail for selling email accounts to spammers...
Send 'em to "pound me in the ass" prison...
"Nature bats last..."
Im sure hand written letters to everyone would be pretty bad, esp seeing as Im sure just about anyone that uses a computer more than 10 years has some shitty handwritting now. Pratice makes perfect!
Watch out for your corn-hole man.
about 1 second in jail for each 175 spams sent out.
No cake for THAT guy!
I'm becoming less defined as days go by Fading away, well you might say I'm losing focus Kind of drifting to the abstract In terms of how I see myself Sometimes I think I can see right through myself Less concerned about fitting into the world Your world that is Cause it doesn't really matter any more (no it doesn't really matter anymore) No it doesn't really matter any more None of this, really matters any more Yes I'm alone, then again I always was As far back as I can tell I think maybe it's because you were never really real to begin with I just made you up to hurt myself And it worked...yes it did There is no you! There is only me There is no you! There is only me There is no fucking you! There is only me There is no fucking you! There is only me Only Well the tiniest little dot caught my eye And it turned out to be a scab And I had this funny feeling Like I just knew it's something bad I just couldn't leave it alone I kept picking at the scab It was a doorway trying to seal itself shut But I climbed through Now I am somewhere I am not supposed to be And I can see things I know I really shouldn't see And now I know why, ya now I know why Things aren't as pretty, on the inside There is no you! There is only me There is no you! There is only me There is no fucking you! There is only me There is no fucking you! There is only me Only
If you spam me gmail's spam filter will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
larryvagina@gmail.com
Everyone here idolized bill gates until they saw the writing on the wall!
larryvagina@gmail.com
Prison rape is funny when it happens to spammers. Especially when the spammers are responsible for the enlarge your penis, and erectile disfunction spams.
Nasty Nate: Better watch your back Fish! Squirrel Master ain't gonna be there for you all the time. Next time I come for you, I'm gonna want some cocktail... FRUIT!
Kenny [AOL Engineer]: Here take it!
[walks away with Squirrel Master]
Kenny [AOL Engineer]: I'm somebody's bitch!
Be sure to remember the Programmers Prayer
I bet he'll have a lot of unsolicited male in his "inbox" ...
(sorry) [goatse tribute warning, first page is work-safe]
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
To: *@aol.com
From: Your Bank
Subject: Send us your Account and Password for $ecurity
> Beheading. Public humiliation (stockades, or something similar). A tattoo on the forehead. Deportation.
[...]
> Actually, besides beheading and the intense sensory thing, all of the other techniques are used in raising children all the time.
Damn, maybe some kids would like the tattoo (although one that said "bedwetter" or whatever they did might return to haunt them), but having your kid deported!?
Umm, wait. Which country will accept them again?
my girlfriend's family has been using aol for over a year now.
why you ask?
because they get it free!!!
they signed up for the free whatever and ever since then, every time that they call in to cancel their subscription - AOL give them more free months. This has gone on for a year now without her family paying a cent.
We seldom regret saying too little but often regret saying too much.
me too
You know what, every time anyone makes a joke about nazis killing jews or japanese getting nuked or Sept. 11, that's all cool with the majority of the Slashdot crowd. The defense posts always are plentiful and modded +5 Insightful. But boy, when the prison-rape jokes come out, there's a big turnaround.
It's an interesting disparity, it seems a lot of Slashdotters can yuk it up when six million other people die, but the thought of one person getting plugged in prison really, really bothers them. I wonder what this says about Slashdotters?